But for overland travel through this small, often overlooked nation, it’s all about the bicycle – a vehicle that allows one to see, hear, smell and even taste every passing feature of scenery. I never would have doubted this to begin with, as I choose a bicycle as my favored mode of travel for all adventures, whether I’m going to the grocery store or to Spain. Speaking of which, this giant of the Mediterranean has long stolen the spotlight from her underarm neighbor, who has spent much of her own history smothered as Spain scanned the horizon for new continents to explore and kingdoms to squash. But on my first visit to Portugal, when I cycled across the country in August and September of 2007, I learned that Portugal has a strong personality and voice of her own; for some reason, though, the world just hasn’t heard it.

I began my tour on the brilliant Portuguese coast – A Costa Azul – immediately south of Lisbon, and in the first day or two the language nearly turned my ears inside out, for I was admittedly just another tourist expecting a dialect of Spanish. I was fortunate enough to have some guidance, though, from Aaron Gafner and Paula Lacerda-Gafner, good Samaritans and proprietors of Blue Coast Bikes. Together we pedaled through the small yet dramatic Serra de Arrabida, a range of peaks which stand high above the sea’s edge like Italy’s famed Cinque Terre coast and offer a view to the south of one of the longest unbroken and federally protected strips of sand in the hemisphere, aproximately 450 miles from north to south . Aaron and I took in this scene one bright, humid afternoon before dropping down to the waterfront village of Portinho Arrábida for a lunch of cheese, olives, fresh grilled sole and a pair of Super Bocks, one of the national brands of beer. After lunch we rode inland toward Palmela , through vineyards and orchards and rolling hill honey country. Here, among the fruit trees, bee boxes lie in the grass, subtle yet conspicuous beacons of the earth-linked communities and the traditional ways of life in rural Portugal.

Several larger highways bear most of the car traffic in the Arrábida, and numerous small roads will lead cyclists on meandering quiet day trips over hills and through valleys, past castles and wine tasting rooms. Casual, rustic caves, these wineries frequently feature, among various table wines, moscatel, a sweet and distinct, fortified, tawny-yellow wine of the Costa Azul region, and I found the weight of a bottle well worth carrying for several days of unsupported touring. Along the lonely highways Aaron and I encountered fresh, free figs for the picking. Portugal bears more fig trees than it could ever utilize, and the watchful cyclist will find branches hanging over fences and offering fresh sap-oozing fruit at every turn in the road. With your snack-pack or panniers always full of black, brown and green fig varieties, you may never consider eating an energy bar again – at least not in the summer and fall.

Other Portuguese products of the earth and sea must be paid for, and they’re well worth it. The amanteigado cheese, which flows like ivory molasses when the tough cultured crust is sliced open, rivals any of the best cheeses of France. It goes wonderfully over a fresh fig – and when you’re incinerating 5000 calories every day, you can indulge all you want in such richness, follow it with a snifter of moscatel, and still have to tighten your belt at week two. All colors and species of seafood make an adventure of a casual lunch, and some of the smallest street cafes prepare some of the best fresh fish. If you don’t speak the language, just point to the display case, where sardines, flounder, mackerel and small jacks lie on ice. Less is more, and these fish are grilled whole, drizzled with olive oil and served with lemon wedges. The Mediterranean agrarian lifestyle is the best recipe there is.

I eventually left the Costa Azul behind and pedaled inland alone, up the Rio Tejo valley, a flat spread which takes a long day to cross before mountains arise – and the most beautiful of these are the Serra da Estrela, where the highest peaks in the nation stand. I camped my first night in these mountains at about 5000 feet of elevation, high on a bald slope, at the end of an abandoned dirt road, in a small grove of pines. In the filtered light of the full moon, I saw a gang of wild boars snort past me around midnight. At dawn I pushed my bike up a steep foot trail and over a high alpine pass, where I had some cheese and wine in a three-sided shepherd’s hut, out of the searing wind. For two weeks I traveled in circles through these mountains, which featured some of the sharpest relief and steepest grades I’ve ever encountered, and on several days I tallied up over two miles of vertical gain, which always made dinner taste great and sleep come fast. Morning meant another day of the same; coffee at the first town square, fig trees in the low valleys, the heat of the afternoon, perhaps a soak in a roadside stream, a high pass or three, and vista after vista of mountains and plains for miles.

The scores of small stone villages could have been anywhere in Europe, while the chestnut and walnut forests and low river valleys reminded me of southern France, and the high, barren alpine plateaus could have passed for a snapshot of Switzerland. I see that I’ve by now compared Portugal multiple times to its more familiar neighboring nations, but that’s simply the best way to paint a picture of the country’s beauty to most listeners. Thing is, when I talk to myself, I now compare almost every other place I go to Portugal.